I’m struggling with where to begin when talking about The Guard Room. Transparently, when I don’t know how to start a review, I usually start with the plot: this is a movie where this thing happens. The Guard Room is pretty standard in that respect: our main character Hilda gets a new job as a security guard, and weird stuff starts to happen. The issue is where it goes from there, or more accurately, where it doesn’t go.
The Guard Room is kind of a confusing watch. Despite its simple premise, it struggles to find its feet tonally. The humor scenes ring particularly strange, since you’re never sure if you’re supposed to be laughing or not. They live in an awkward medium between being played completely straight and sitcom-levels of cheese, and it lands pretty badly when it ventures into hot-button topics like homelessness, racism, and sexism. Not going to comment on any broader issues here, but I think if you’re gonna bring in jokes like that, you should know how you want them to land. I will say, though, giving Patrick (the film’s token Asian character) the Mickey Rooney Breakfast at Tiffany’s voice was definitely a choice.
I know I’ve mentioned the story is uncomplicated, and that can definitely work. A story doesn’t require complexity to be compelling, and many straightforward premises create great films. The issue here though is the script, and it’s hard to truly judge any of the performances since there wasn’t much to work with. Much of the runtime is consumed by filler scenes that have little to no effect on the plot, and the overall stiff, unnatural dialogue just feels worse the longer you watch it. I wish I could say it starts to feel fun or silly at some point, but it’s just really boring.
Now, I didn’t go to film school, but I (and I think many viewers) can tell when basic stuff is going wrong, and boy, it’s going wrong here. Shots sometimes shift out of focus, the camera shakes and tilts as the cameraman readjusts, and other moments that just look very amateurish. While I do think at least half the movie looks fine and even good at moments, these flubs really stand out in a way that spoils the overall experience. I almost didn’t mention the 6-7 prominent product placements, which, while they are the least of this movie’s problems, still add awkwardness to scenes that are already hard to watch.
Overall, I wanted to enjoy this movie a lot more than I did, but so much of it is just very rough. The characters are flat, the dialogue is wooden, and the parts of this movie that are okay are overshadowed by the large stretches that just do not work. I took a look at Letterboxd, and it looks like director Michael Thordarson’s other films are both well over two hours, and as this one is a sleek 94 minutes, it appears to me that he’s growing as a writer/director and refining his style. While I didn’t enjoy The Guard Room, I do look forward to seeing future projects.
